Student Panel

Posted by Nicholas Beckman in Students

The panel of students met outside of the Southwest Annex building next to Fogelson Library on Sept. 18. The two days prior to the meeting, the Laureate Board of Directors came to SFUAD as part of a quarterly inspection of on-campus happenings. Consisting of six students, myself included, the panel was seated before 15 board members, as well as SFUAD President Larry Hinz, Director of Campus and Residential Life John Rodriguez and Senior Director of Student Life Laura Nunnelly.

Other students in the panel included Vincent Mann, Sarah Sanders, Yazmin Borrell, Matt Ruder and Alvie Hurtado.

“There is no real selection process.  Some students I have met before or made their ID during orientation, so I remembered their name,” says Nunnelly. “The idea is just to get a good mix, so the Board can understand the experience across campus.”

The questions posed by the board members covered a variety of issues spanning interdepartmental collaboration, on-campus living and integration of international students with the rest of the student body. The members, who hailed from everywhere from Auckland, New Zealand to Miami, FL, also were eager to hear the prospects of domestic students and international transfers who wish to study abroad.

The answers from students were mostly positive, although concerns were expressed regarding issues such as library hours and on-campus food service.

“It was a little nerve-wracking to walk in and sit at the front of a room filled with the people funding and running our school,” says Sanders, a freshman in the performing arts department, “but as we began talking back and forth, it felt less like an inquisition and more like a genuine conversation.”

The board members also posed questions regarding how students became aware of the school and what has kept them in Santa Fe. A question was also asked about whether the cost of SFUAD swayed students’ decisions about enrolling. Most agreed that scholarships had been the ultimate incentive to come to Santa Fe.

“The best part about it, I feel, was the fact that there are people in charge of the university that actually care,” Hurtado says.

An interesting question was posed by board member Bill Durden from Baltimore about the process of forming one’s own creative identity. He asked how exactly instructors and administrators can measure that process. The response was minimal,  reduced to confused stares. After some deliberation, the general consensus was that measuring the process that students as individuals are currently experiencing is difficult to decide in front of 15 professional adults.

“I felt that all of my fellow panel members answered thoughtfully and truthfully, speaking their minds clearly even if what they had to say might not be something the panel wanted to hear,” Sanders says.

Generally speaking, the board seemed aware of the social climate surrounding SFUAD and being that they  hailed from various Laureate institutions around the country, their ability to judge a campus’s atmosphere is presumably well-researched. What they choose to do with this information will be geared toward helping internationals adjust better to Santa Fe (and other Laureate schools), making on-campus living more accommodating and improving conditions for the school to make it a thriving institution.